


pure & simple

by pyrites



Series: hand in hand [1]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Autistic Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Awkward Flirting, Bisexual Character, Bisexual Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, EDS Jon, First Love, Flashbacks, Fluff, Indian Jon, Jon Sims Bi Pride January 2021, M/M, OCD Jon, TL;DR - Jon's first job; first friends outside of school; first boyfriend, Technically Post-Prentiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-06
Updated: 2021-01-06
Packaged: 2021-03-17 09:27:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28597695
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyrites/pseuds/pyrites
Summary: (Jon can still remember the way his stomach had sprouted wings. He remembers the hope, and terror, and pride.)While cleaning out his closet, Jon stumbles across a personal archive.i.first time
Relationships: Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist & Original Character(s), Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist/Original Male Character(s)
Series: hand in hand [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2095512
Comments: 36
Kudos: 110
Collections: GerryTitan verse, bi jon sims celebration





	pure & simple

**Author's Note:**

> first installment of a series of fics for the [jon sims bi pride event](http://jonsimsbipride.tumblr.com/)! i'm taking the prompts a bit out of order! bear with me.
> 
> **CWs in the end notes!**

───── ✿ ─────

Coming home at the end of the day used to be a relief. Jon used to _yearn_ for the blissful moment he’d be allowed to crawl back into his own bed after a hot shower, for the weight to finally be taken off his bones. The routine of twisting the lock on his front and bedroom doors three times each had become such a mindless little step towards getting comfortable — a _part_ of what made it _possible_ to get comfortable, and stay that way. Three had become just enough. It was progress.

Jon twists the lock on his front door twenty-one times today. His eyes had started to well around nine, fifteen picking up his breath like a sharp wind. His empty fingers gripped the offending wrist at eighteen twists as if he could wrench his hand from the latch with force, as if both hands don’t just come back to the same string of gnawed-out nerves. He wanted to get to thirty, by that point — a nice, rounded number, because maybe that would feel safe enough? But then he would want thirty-three for the repetition, and it would be left at an odd number too big to pass off as a set, so he would have no choice but to go until forty-five. It’s satisfying when multiples of three end as multiples of five, who doesn’t love a good _five, ten, fifteen, twenty?_ Why hadn’t he just stopped at fifteen, then?

No matter, because he stops at twenty-one. He’d pried his hand from the door and gotten a hold of his panic before it reached the point of flapping. _That_ would hurt, even having graduated past his wounds scabbing over. 

He needs to take his mind off of it. He only came back here because he needed to wash the laundry from his overnight bag and pack new, but _Elias_ had insisted he stay at least twenty-four hours away from the Institute before coming back or he’ll have Rosie turn him away at the door. Utter _nonsense._ How could he _possibly_ relax? How could he sleep any better here, alone and with no knowing whether this place is even secure anymore?

He could cook. He could clean up the place. Try to remember what self-care was like before his routine necessitated change. 

Right. Yes, he just needs an order of operations here… Clean, shower, cook while his hair dries, so that when he finally collapses into bed, he’ll not only have a chance at getting some rest but he won’t need a second shower in the morning to rid himself of the idea of mold from sleeping on it damp.

Fine. Fine, yes, he can do that. Anything to stave off the baseless hysteria broiling somewhere under his diaphragm. 

Come to think of it, cleaning is the only way he may find himself certain that there’s nothing _wrong_ with his flat, that it’s safe enough to shut his eyes in. It’ll tire him out. A worthwhile step towards getting comfortable. It’s _cooking_ that will bring him something closer to joy. Everything else needs to be finished with first.

It’s hours into the evening when he finds the shoebox.

It’s been sitting on the top shelf of his closet since he moved in here, he thinks, if the dust on its top cover is any indication. It’s upsetting to have to smear it off, but he’s been wearing rubber gloves since reopening a wound from one soapy scrubbing too many while cleaning the kitchen. It helps not to have to touch the grime at all.

He already knows a few of the things he’ll find in here, but when he opens it, some of it does surprise him. Oh, wow. Has it always been this full?

Jon limps his way over to his bed to sit on the edge with a wince, sore knee screaming from bending and unbending to pick things up and put them away and standing, standing, standing until it shook. He pulls his gloves off to knead at his thigh with both hands, rocking to press more weight down with the heels of his palms, counting in beats until he hits twelve and forces himself to look back at the things he’d brought over to sort through.

Could he ever throw any of this out? He’s filled up at least two garbage bags just this evening. He hasn’t opened this box in years, but — he’d kept it for a reason.

It occurs to him all at once just how much of himself he’s been packing back into boxes. Jon reaches inside and pulls out the first thing he can remember thinking that he needed a shoebox to hide things in at all, drawing it into his lap.

───── ✿ ─────

There’s only so much you can do in Bournemouth, once you’ve seen everything there is to see.

The ocean is so known for its constant change, tide high, tide low, ferociously _awake_ in all its empty. You’ll never touch the same particles of water twice, never see the same foam once it fades. But Jon had walked barefoot in the depressions of sand where the tide had spent its active hours and looked out over the sea and thought to himself, _it looks just the same as yesterday._

And that’s only when dadima let him go that far down the beach at all. It was only recently that he’d been allowed to ride his bike to the coast alone, and venture from the safety of the pier without a distinct awareness that there were eyes on his back. Worried eyes, certainly, but it just felt belittling. As if he hadn’t learned to swim the moment she could insist that he take classes. As if he was just too weak to keep himself from being swept away, or too stupid to judge whether he could keep his balance in the breakers.

_(It didn’t take a genius to put together that she’d nearly drowned once, that she was only afraid, but it did take some growing up.)_

So perhaps it was odd that he’d looked forward to finding a job as soon as he could legally apply for one, but he did. Anything to get out of the house and _do_ something, to occupy his mind, his time, his hands. Talk to people, or not, because really, both of those things had their pros and cons, but he would never get to find a balance between them if all he ever did was stay at home and read.

The _problem_ was that there weren’t exactly many options for a sixteen year old in Bournemouth. There wasn’t much of _anything_ in Bournemouth that didn’t make him want to roll his eyes, sometimes. It was only novel if you were a tourist. 

For a while, it looked like it would be between one of twenty-plus ice cream parlors or trying to make it as a busboy, and. Well, to be honest, neither of those things sounded appealing, or sustainable. Reaching into sticky vats all day or having to touch slimy dishes made him want to peel his skin off and steam clean it.

He took applications from those places anyway when he biked all over town scanning for anywhere that might be hiring. He’d thought about filling them out right then and there just so he wouldn’t have to make this trip again, but there were questions that he didn’t know how to answer on his own, and _calling_ dadima thirty times for help would be significantly more upsetting than just bringing them all home to see which blanks he was left with, bring them to her after supper, and do this trip again when his legs could handle it.

It was pure luck that his favorite arcade was looking for help. He could handle sweeping, and vacuuming carpets, and reloading ticket dispensers, and whatever. Touching things that other people put their grimy hands all over is generally unavoidable, but at least this job wouldn’t be _wet_ by _default._ It would honestly be nice to know for certain that the joysticks and buttons were being kept clean throughout the day. It would make it easier for him to play, too.

When he went back to drop off all of his applications, he’d gone to the arcade first. Just to make sure that they had the longest time to look it over, and might get back to him sooner. Okay, so _maybe_ he dillydallied some before dropping off the next few. He hesitated at the first ice cream parlor and just ended up ordering a very boring cup of vanilla/chocolate swirl to pick at on the curb. It could have been very stupid to get his hopes up. Or, it could be intuition. He’d like to trust his intuition for once.

It was the independence he wanted so badly. To have a schedule that was his own, money he could control, and… yeah, actually, _people._ Mostly people.

And so, getting a call from the arcade the next day was almost nothing compared to finding out that _two_ of his coworkers were only barely older than him; just old enough to still be _his age,_ but they’d never seen him in school. Any judgment they made of him would be based on the arcade alone. He didn’t have to be the weird kid or the disabled kid or the one that would have a proper meltdown if you kicked his leg under the desks enough times or any number of the ugly words his classmates have learned over the years, none of it. He could just be — well, whatever he turned out to be, here.

What he didn’t tell Barry and Tina until the start of summer was that he’d already _been_ something here. For at least a few months before his hiring, there was a distinct joy to leaving his carefully chosen pseudonym at the top of as many scoreboards as he could.

Now? Now, he could just bump himself back up after closing if he’d gotten knocked down a peg. And not a _soul_ would ever guess that it was him.

It was sort of exhilarating to finally see the stir it caused when he wasn’t _allowed_ to incriminate himself by playing. Jon would have to fight to keep from snickering as he listened to furious 13 year-olds griping about how they were going to personally kill this _SJG_ guy if they ever found out who he was. They’d even stomped up to him on more than one occasion while he wiped down machines to ask if _he_ knew anything about the red highlighted name that they couldn’t seem to get rid of. The chaos of it was thrilling, for this place.

Plus, Barry and Tina certainly wouldn’t know a thing about Stephen Jay Gould’s theory of punctuated equilibrium, so Jon was almost 80% certain that over-explaining his inspiration would just dampen the dramatic reveal. Ergo, he played dumb when they speculated about it in the back room, dodged accusations, and tried to schedule _when_ he offered to lock up for the night so they might not suspect he was _too_ invested in being the last person in the building. It was all about strategy. What the hell else could he have been spending his time doing?

When he was finally caught in the act, it was because Barry had come back in to look for his wallet just after closing. They locked eyes across the room as Jon flinched himself out of the zone playing Street Fighter 2, until — in a fit of pure, unadulterated idiocy — he turned back to the screen to save his streak. Barry crossed over to him just as he managed to win the round, and gasped as the initials flashed onto the screen. Jon wilted against the machine in defeat.

“…Please don’t tell Douglas.”

Their manager knowing that he played the games off the clock seemed less important than their manager knowing that he unlocked the machines to reuse the coins in order to do so. Barry just laughed, clapped him on the back, and said his secret is safe with him. He’d always wanted to be able to say he was the cool best friend of somebody that had a secret identity to maintain. He wouldn’t even tell Tina if Jon didn’t want him to.

But Barry wanted to, because Tina was _his_ best friend, and so Jon thought — well, why not? What was the harm in just one more person knowing?

Keeping a local legend alive was a lot easier with three people spinning yarns. It felt like an honest camaraderie, however built upon secrets. The lies were innocent enough. All in good fun, hurting no one. It was, without a doubt, the most fun he’d ever had in that city.

Barry and Tina had helped keep suspicion off his back, and think of terrible little signed taunts he could leave around the arcade for the most invested adolescent locals to find. Like those interactive games of _Clue,_ when people go to hotels in costume and act out the murder mystery. Once, they found a flier slapped onto the side of the Pac-Man machine that said nothing but “ **SJG MEET ME IN THE STREETS**.” 

_(He’d never laughed so hard over threats of violence. That flier is folded up in the box, too.)_

He’d ruined it eventually, of course. All things must end, and Jon was rather accustomed to his luck running out. What he wasn’t used to, at the time, was actually finding some truth in that one saying that Christians don’t realize is actually just from _The Sound of Music;_ _“When G-d closes a door, He opens a window.”_

That American boy had been far too cute to be flirting with _him,_ surely. That’s what Jon told himself, anyway, despite Tina’s teasing when she claimed to have noticed some _lingering glance_ or whatever horrible thing she’d called it. Jon didn’t see it himself, so it didn’t happen. 

He was certain it was a fluke. Or a joke. Someone from school’s visiting cousin roped into some elaborate ‘ask this person out only to humiliate them later’ type of scheme that he’d seen in at _least_ three separate movies before. 

But then the boy came in the next day and Jon had watched him _visibly_ perk up upon finding him by the air hockey table. He kept drifting over to him when he got a moment away from his siblings, _talked_ to him, tried to show off at electronic basketball when Jon was sitting in his stool in the corner to rest his legs.

To… impress him, apparently, because his opinion suddenly had some value. For reasons that Jon couldn’t begin to understand just by awkwardly soldiering through small talk cut into casual pieces. It wasn’t like he was going to listen to _Tina_ about it. What did she know? He’d never even told her that he liked boys.

Was it that obvious?

Maybe he’d hovered too close to Barry right in front of her before, and she made her conjectures then. But it’s not as if he never hovered around her, too. And how would this random American boy know just from looking at him whether it was _okay_ to flirt with him, anyway? No one had ever _flirted_ with him before. Even thinking the _word_ made his stomach squirm.

Jon had to hand it to him for his effort, though. He was playing a _lot_ of electronic basketball.

He learned his name by accident, when his little sister shouted _‘Luis!’_ across the room and he turned around from their conversation to call back to her in Spanish, Jon watching in bewilderment as they waved their hands at each other until she stomped off in another direction. Luis looked a little embarrassed when he spun back around, and it was strangely… reassuring, actually, to see a crack in his confidence. When Jon finally found the time to ask what he was doing in _Bournemouth_ of all places, he couldn’t help choking on his water at the answer.

_“Vacation?”_ he repeated, laughing entirely too hard. “No one comes here on _vacation.”_

Luis laughed along with him. “Why not?”

“It’s—” Jon cleared his throat, thumping a fist on his chest. “Sorry, it’s— it’s _so_ boring here, there’s almost _nothing_ to do. Your parents must be out of their minds. Either that, or they hate you.”

The moment after he said it, he clapped a hand over his mouth in startled apology. But Luis actually _laughed,_ nodding in complete agreement.

“I’m leaning ‘out of their minds,’” he clarified. “I blame it on being pretty much landlocked back in the states. It’s good to be near a beach.”

“An endless stretch of beach with hardly anything _on_ it.”

Luis grinned at him. “We’re in an arcade, on a pier, _right now.”_

Jon nodded, eyes wide. “And it’s just about the only one _worth_ a damn. Most of the other piers are pretty empty, just— just decoration.”

“You have that big aquarium! And an amusement park.”

“There are bigger aquariums in better places,” Jon scoffed. “And if you’re talking about _Adventure Wonderland,_ I actually sort of pity you.”

“Well, _I’ve_ been having a good time.” He leaned back against the side of a racer machine, tilted his head. “The boys are pretty cute.”

The air in Jon’s lungs turned to cement and fell right through his stomach. He tried to reply, but nothing _near_ as smooth came to mind. Nothing at _all_ came to mind, and so nothing came out. It was the first time he could _ever_ recall being relieved by the sound of a soft drink hitting the floor in the distance, and probably the fastest he’d ever hustled to the supply closet for mop. Luis didn’t stop him from rushing away, and was gone by the time he got back.

The day after that, though, he was there again. It was his last day before his family would be continuing on to their _actual_ vacation destination, and he wanted at least one more chance to hang out with somebody cool. _Somebody cool,_ he said, tapping his elbow against Jon’s in this casual, easy way that even Jon couldn’t willfully misinterpret. Still, it was easiest to joke back that of _course_ he would settle for coming back here to do that, because Bournemouth is every bit as boring and empty as Jon had argued the first time, and a lot of the other teenagers their age wandering around the beach were— generally unpleasant. But maybe that was only him.

When he asked passively about this _SJG_ nonsense due to his little sister’s retelling of something she’d heard from a local, Jon panicked. For the first time, he didn’t think twice before confirming who he was.

It felt, in that moment, like the only thing he could do to justify the attention he was getting. It impressed Luis enough that his eyes lit up. 

_(Jon can still remember the way his stomach had sprouted wings. He remembers the hope, and terror, and pride.)_

“Prove it,” Luis insisted, and he’d been grinning so brilliantly that he couldn’t have possibly meant any harm. He jogged over to a game station and Jon looked around, lightheaded, for one of his friends. Barry spotted him first and promised with a thumbs up that he’d keep their manager distracted while Jon wasted a few minutes of his shift playing Dance Dance Revolution.

Far too many people must have been playing a serious game of telephone since his confession, though. Jon heard whispers of his alias all behind him and refused to look back, to confirm, until he’d proved himself worthy of the claim. 

It had mapped out so perfectly in his head in the seconds it took to boot up the game. He would win, his streak would be safe, his reputation strengthened tenfold, and the cute American boy would kiss him on the pier later just as the sun started to set. It would have been perfect and cinematic and very romantic and Jon had almost had it. Almost.

It was the laughter that ruined it. Recognizable laughter, the exact cadence he heard over his shoulder all the time in class and out on the track field when he failed to run laps without twisting something. It resonated above the chatter of his reign and seemed to remind his entire body all at once that it isn’t actually _built_ for things like _Dance Dance Revolution._

His foot slipped. He stumbled right into Luis and they landed in a heap on the flashing metal panels underneath them, tangled up in front of far too many people for Jon to feel flustered in any _happy_ way at the circumstance. The laughter grew raucous, utterances of his secret identity becoming sneers and denials, and then tinged with taunts far uglier when Luis trailed a hand down his arm and asked with an honest smile if he was alright.

_“So much for ‘SJG,’”_ someone called out before the acronym took on various speculated meanings, most of which starting with “Sims” and ending in—

Jon’s mind went blank with dread. He scrambled up and limped away to hide in the back room, hardly cognizant of Tina crowding after him like a shield until he pushed her away. It took until Barry told him through the door that he’d kicked _all of those little tossers_ out of the arcade, that the coast was clear, that Jon could stop rocking so hard. When he finally emerged after getting a hold of his panicked, flapping hands, there was no sign of Luis and his family.

Barry stayed a measured distance away from him, his arms held out in preparation for a hug he didn’t know how to offer, and that Jon wouldn’t have accepted anyway. For all of the commotion, or for all that it _felt like_ such a spectacle, no one else was looking at them. They’d all gone back to their games.

Tina was the only person smiling. She passed two things into his hands; the single most atrocious stuffie he’d ever seen — a round, blue smiley face with limbs, like a knock-off M&M with the most _abyssal_ black eyes — and a piece of paper with an AIM screenname written down on it, next to a bubbly, doodled heart.

Oh.

Oh!

_Oh._ Oh, g-d.

When he got home that night, his first destination was dadima’s office. It wasn’t _only_ her office, really, not a strict, private space. It was just where they kept the home computer. Dadima never actually restricted his online activity. She would have preferred that he be home and in her desk chair than somewhere she could lose him, and one of the things he always appreciated about her was that she never, ever went through his things unless they were cleaning his room together. He never really had much of anything to hide, either way.

Until then, that is. He kept the horrific stuffie tucked under his shirt when he slunk through the door and scurried to the back of the house, shifting it to keep it from bulging in a way she might see from where she was reading on the couch. He brushed off her question about how work was, shouted an agreement that dahl with rice was fine for supper. 

It had been a long time since he added a new contact to his friends list, and it took him a solid six minutes to come up with a greeting that didn’t sound _stupid._ Just _‘hi’_ wouldn’t cut it; it wouldn’t feel personal enough, or interesting enough. Would he look _unintelligent_ if he typed in all lowercase, or would that be more conversational? Would proper syntax make him look _pretentious?_

He _did_ get somewhat of a feel for Luis’ sense of humor, though. And thus:

> **DimetroJon_9** : This little round man is a visual travesty and I believe it MAY be haunted. Studies will commence shortly
> 
> **DimetroJon_9** : (Hi this is Jon btw)
> 
> **DimetroJon_9** : (From the arcade)

It takes until the next day to get a response. Jon had blamed a thousand different things for it — his own humiliating behavior, the realization of disinterest, maybe even out of mercy so that Jon could wipe the past three days out of his memory and pretend it never happened, maybe three messages at once was overbearing — but it ended up being for the logical reason. Luis _was_ traveling, and had limited access to computers until he was at a hotel. Obviously.

> **DimetroJon_9** : Why didn’t you just give your phone number?
> 
> **cyaninja** : ok i need you to understand that i was Panicking So Hard

Apparently, while Barry was shooing his classmates out of the arcade (for “trailing sand on the carpets,” of course,) Luis had run over to Tina where she hovered by the back room. Tina had told him that Jon would be fine; he’d been forthright with her and Barry about his autism, and they would often clear a path for him if he needed to deal with a sensory overload in the back room alone. Jon was honestly touched that she would take the time to explain that when he couldn’t.

Luis had intended to wait around until he was alright, but his little sister Marisol had run in to get him so they could get to wherever they were headed before nightfall. He managed to scramble over to the crane machine, insisting that she give him a few more minutes. It took until his third try to actually _grab_ anything, and he didn’t have the time to care about how ridiculous it was.

> **cyaninja** : i just wanted to give you SOMETHING to apologize for what happened
> 
> **cyaninja** : youre right he is so so ugly im so sorry
> 
> **DimetroJon_9** : No I 
> 
> **DimetroJon_9** : Actually sort of love him thank you?

He looked at the stuffie for a long moment. Squinted one eye almost shut. Tilted his head. Squinted the other eye completely shut. Tried to picture it as something else.

Yeah, no.

> **DimetroJon_9** : But he IS going in a box as soon as I find one
> 
> **cyaninja** : you know what thats better than i expected!!!

It was all better than Jon expected, too. He’d lost the mystery of SJG in the process of getting here, of course, but — that didn’t mean he had to stop playing. It didn’t make that long accomplishment disappear. 

Maybe it wasn’t so bad that people knew.

───── ✿ ─────

**Author's Note:**

> **CW: OCD episode; anxiety; references to/brief instance of bullying; brief homophobia from some classmates**
> 
> it's been rough, honestly, with all the backlash this project has been receiving, but **i'm going to create jontent that is so bi** and it's going to be okay. credit to @[cheshirecatboyfriend](http://cheshirecatboyfriend.tumblr.com/), also, for jon's AIM screenname! we love a good "dino" pun in this house.
> 
> this is all gerrytitan compliant, too! the series is going to use a lot of concepts i dropped in [two ships passing](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22189123/chapters/52974727), in particular. one day, i'll reveal where tim made a cameo in this very flashback.
> 
> [[jon sims bi pride tumblr](http://jonsimsbipride.tumblr.com/)] | [[my tumblr](http://gerrydelano.tumblr.com/)] | [[ GTCU masterpost](https://docs.google.com/document/u/1/d/14KlgPfOb16ocGj8k0QrElw6UY0SqoNeH2yTj_zQ31bA/edit#)]


End file.
